One year of R2GConnect: More than 1,000 digital health partnership discussions were started
R2GConnect has supported more than 100 partnership scouting projects since R2GConnect‘s official launch in October 2022. Most requests came from digital health accelerators, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and regulators, as well as service providers and their startup programs. More than 1,000 partnership discussions were started.
Since its first launch in October 2022, R2GConnect has been serving as a facilitator of partnerships in digital health. Following the launch, the platform hosted more than 100 briefings globally from a range of industry partners looking to work together with the startups to help them grow even further.
Accelerators, incubators and pharma companies were most active innovation seekers on R2GConnect. Accelerator and incubator briefings constitute the largest group. 39% of all R2GConnect partnership offers have been published by this group. This category includes accelerators like VITA Accelerator, Innovation in Health, and China Accelerator. Some of them search on behalf of pharma companies which is the second most active group of companies looking for digital health solutions. Pharma companies published 9% of all open calls in R2GConnect. Boehringer Ingelheim, Novo Nordisk, Novartis, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson among others were most active.
R2GConnect also hosted partnership requests from Insurance companies and government entities representing 9% of all briefings including the German Federal Ministry of Health, Saudi Enaya and CSS.
Companies providing services to digital health startups including ORCHA, Doublesided, IBM, or Amazon, placed 9% of all startup offers on R2GConnect.
The last two business groups searching for digital health startups on R2GConnect were investors (6%) such as Digital Health Ventures or APX Ventures and conference organizers (3%), e.g. Med-Tech World, Frontiers Health or The Radical Health Festival.
What were healthcare companies and investors looking for?
Most searches were related to a specific digital health solution type or therapeutic area.
In the solution categories, companies searched for digital therapeutics and disease management solutions (23%), care coordination (18%), data integration, analytics and AI (13%), telehealth and RPM (10%), real-world evidence and clinical trial solutions (9%). Companies also sought platforms for developing digital health solutions (4%), as well as marketplaces, medical devices and wearables, pharmacy solutions, and others.
Approximately 50% of partner requests targeted digital health solutions without specific therapeutic areas. For the other half, the top five therapeutic areas were metabolism and diabetes (41 requests), cardiology (36), gastroenterology (35), dermatology (34) and mental health (34).
Examples illustrate what companies were looking for and how interested digital health companies were:
- “US digital health solutions to improve patient onboarding experience and management of their diabetes”, Novo Nordisk (59 applications, 1,318 views)
- “Digital obesity solutions for patients”, Egis Pharmaceuticals (30 applications, 1,651 views)
- “Digital health technologies for a free NordDEC certification”, ORCHA (19 applications, 1,236 views)
- “Digital Health solutions to improve quality of life in the rural areas” TicBiomed for EU Startup program (33 applications, 1,045 views)
- “Developer of a cancer prevention app”, German Ministry of Health (19 applications, 1,731 views)
- “Digital health solutions” IBM (65 Applications, 2148 views)
What did the offer to the startups look like?
26% of briefing partners included some type of financial benefit, including grants or capital investments. Funding amounts range from $1,000 to $1 million, with most offers ranging from $50,000 to $150,000.
21% of briefs offered product development and piloting, 17% offered advice on team and solution building, legal questions, or help to find an investor or some type of commercialization and sales support (11%). Certification and technical support were offered by 7%.
Since the launch of R2GConnect, briefing partners have been able to initiate 1,099 partnership discussions using the platform (as of October 26, 2023).
R2GConnect is part of Research2Guidance‘s Partnership Builder program, which helps healthcare companies successfully build and manage their digital health portfolio globally. The program is a structured and modular approach for companies and investors to outsource parts of their partnership programs or deal flows. R2G’s Partnership Builder program allows companies to focus on the key activities of a partnership with a digital health startup or company. R2G can take care of the rest.
Visit www.r2gconnect.com to find out more or contact Sorin Stircu at: [email protected] (Partnerships Manager).
